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Sunday, December 27, 2009

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Today's Sweet comes from five cake decorators who made an extreme Christmas Tree cake for the Festival of Trees in Utah to benefit Primary Children's Medical Center. Since the cake was itself made to benefit a charity, I thought it would be a fitting way to wrap up our Charity Countdown.

As you can see, it's big. :)

Here are a few close-ups:

Love the train and wood-graining.

It's hard to believe that tiny tree trunk can hold up such a huge five-tiered cake!

We finished our 14 days of giving on Christmas Eve (go here if you don't know what this is about), and I'm proud to say that together we gave a lot of money to some fantastic organizations! We haven't quite reached all of our goals, though, so if you haven't had the chance to give your dollar yet there's still time to donate!

Here are the current tallies:

Charity:Water - $12,869 raised online so far. Every $5K builds a well that serves 250 people in need of clean drinking water, so as of now 643 people will be helped thanks to your dollars! (Today is the last day to give, so let's see if we can't still reach our initial goal of $20K!)St. Jude Children's Research Hospital - Sorry, we didn't set up a page to track these donations. But you know you gave, right? So that's all that matters.

Heifer International - $5,770 raised online so far. Again, that's over halfway to our $10K goal!Child's Play - since they also accept Paypal (and prefer it if the donation is more than $1), we don't have totals for Child's Play. On our First Giving page we've had $2,072 given - but again, the majority of us gave via Paypal.Share Our Strength - Initially featured on Day #2 of the Countdown, so a lot of you donated before we had a way of keeping a tally. (Had to switch to St. Jude because the site wouldn't accept $1 donations.) On our First Giving page now, though, we have $2,783.

Puffy Paws Kitty Haven - Another with two options to give, but we've talked to Rick & Chrissy and they reported well over $5,000 given through Paypal. So combined with the $5,186 on the FG page, that's over $10,000 - or enough to feed and house the cats for over 3 months, plus pay for the de-wormingmeds they needed. Thanks for helping meet some serious needs, guys!

Operation Smile - $2,712. To put that in perspective, that's 12 kids who will now have reconstructive surgeries thanks to your generosity. If we hit our $10K goal, that would be 41 kids.

The Buckland Family Trust - The last time I spoke with Kristie, a close family friend, the Bucklands had received more than $14,000 dollars through Paypal. Awesome! Thank you for helping Amanda & her stepdaughter start to put the pieces of their lives back together.

Free the Slaves - $1,759 so far of our $10K goal. These are all great causes, guys - if you're catching up, please be sure to check them out.

I think the charity idea is great but feel that people would have been more likely to donate if they could have made one single donation which would then be divided up evenly between all of these worthy causes. That would simplify things a lot. Maybe a suggestion for next year???

Still, a lot of money was collected and a lot of people will benefit from your commendable efforts!! Congrats!

I love Primary Children's Medical Center! My daughter had a cranial reconstruction two years ago at that hospital on December 7th, and the nurses and staff couldn't have been better! Especially at Christmas time. We will be back on January 7th for another surgery, this time outpatient, thankfully!

Congratulations (is that how you spell it?) on the great charity work. In the spirit of Jen's suggestion about one big donation, could you please post the total of our contributions this year as close as you can estimate? Thanks.

I, for one, didn't mind donating numerous times, especially after I set up an account with First Giving. I also check your site every day and it reminded me to practice the virtue of generosity.

This was a wonderful, wonderful way to get thousands of people together for good causes. I couldn't donate this past week because I literally ran out of money. Normally I would have been upset but after following all of these charities, I felt BLESSED to be alive, to have a place to live, food to eat and relatives who love me. I get paid on the 30th and I will go back and make donations to all of the charities I missed - I promise. Thank you Cake Wrecks for proving that the Internet is not a place full of those lurking to do evil.

Is there any real way to track the time distribution of the giving? How much, percentage wise, was given in the first day that each charity was up? Maybe stick with a theme--all children's charities, all animal charities, something like that? I'm trying to think of ways to improve it. I'd love it to be an annual thing.

The charity idea is great, and I will finish my missing donations as soon as I get home (I don't trust the security of my in-laws' computer). Well done for using the CakeWrecks power for good! :-)

I do have to say though that making several small donations has been a wee bit problematic for me - my bank put a hold on my card after the second donation because they don't trust transactions of such small amounts (apparently $1 is often used as a 'test' by identity theives). Anyway, I'll persevere and get my donations done...but like Jenny said above, a single larger donation would be muh easier for the readers (though maybe not for you!)

Thanks again for all your hard work with this (as well as the smiles you've given me and my hubby since I discovered you this summer!) Merry belated Christmas!

I think it's wonderful to have the different kinds of charities, because one might be important to one person and a completely different kind to another person. What a fantastic idea, and you guys have done a wonderful job!

I've been reading this blog for a year and I've never commented before. but now I just wanted to say, thank you so much Jen & John for giving me a way to help people and do something beautiful this Christmas! I was gonna spend my money on silly stuff, I'm glad I didn't ♥ :)

I got the see the Festival of Trees cake up close and in person and it was truly awesome! The PCMC folks do so much charitable work throughout the year for children who have real needs. Whole families are touched when services are provided to a child. It is blessing to have such a facility in our community!

Thanks for the other charitable venues to support. Keep up the good work--and the many smiles that come to us from your efforts on CW!

The charity idea is wonderful. What a great way to bring good causes to a wide range of people. I would like to suggest a charity idea for the upcoming year March for Babies. The money goes to help with research for preterm birth, stillbirth and miscarriage.

We go to the Festival of Trees every year and it is a tradition that was started by my parent's when I was a child. This year's trees by far surpassed the trees of last year. The pictures of the Christmas tree cake just do not do it justice. The Festival of Trees and Primary Children's go hand in hand here in Utah and I couldn't be prouder to be a lifelong supporter of both:).

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to be a part of your collective good deed. I haven't minded at all giving just a little bit every day. Wonderful way to maintain perspective through the holiday. Thanks again!

What a great idea this has been! It was great to see old favorites (give kids the world) and find out about new ones (Love146) and be able to help someone in such immediate need as the woman who lost everything in the fire. Thanks also for featuring Primary Children's here. They treated our niece for brain cancer this past year and she's doing great! Thanks for all you guys do...especially consistently making me laugh!

We went to the Festival of Trees in Salt Lake City this year! We live in Colorado now, but we lived there for a few years and went to the Festival every year, so we made the trip back this year. All of it's amazing.

Although, granted, generally the tears are either of laughter or my eyes are watering because of the hideous nature of the cakes. But today, it's a good crying.

I'm unemployed this holiday season, but I was able to donate a small amount to a couple of your charities. I think it was a great idea to organize your wrecky minions to do good work. (or was this a test, part of the first step on your plan to conquer the world? Ah--I'm afraid I've said too much.)

I disagree with some of the other commenters. I liked the idea of donating a small amount to a wide variety of charities that benefit a wide variety of causes. I didn't see anything wrong with saving my dollar from one day, then giving two to a charity that hit closer to home for me the next. Thank you for organizing this for us!

Thanks for todays Sunday Sweets, too. Primary Children's saved my life as a child, so I'm a big fan of theirs!

This charity campaign has been wonderful. I always think about the change or the dollar I give in the red buckets at this time of year, but with this campaign, I could see that my small contribution, along with many others made a big difference. I guess it's true that big changes in the world start with small changes made by individuals :)

I liked having several charities to support. Yes, I gave more to some than others, but I learned about new opportunities for giving and got to help out several different organizations that are close to my heart. My big complaint at work is that they don't give us enough spaces to give to different charities during our charitable giving campaign.

Thanks for getting us all organized so we could see the difference we made!

Thank you for sponsoring the charities and giving us a chance to be a part of something bigger than all of us. I, for one, like that I could give to each charity separately because some pulled at my heart strings (and pocketbook) harder than others (although I gave at least $1 to each.) I'm glad you left the giving open a little longer since I was busy right before Christmas and didn't get to see half of the charities until today.

Please, please, PLEASE do this giving thing again next year! I agree with Carrie Stuart that it was nice to have a variety of charities--even an unofficial charity like that poor woman who lost her family and home--so we could give as we were moved to give.

I love that we can create an account at First Giving and just sign in each time. I REALLY love reading everyone else's comments along with their donation amounts at First Giving, and how it tracks the totals.

I don't say things like God Bless You because it doesn't make sense to me but in this instance it sounds like the right thing to say - God Bless Y'all! What a fantastic thing to do. Even if you didn't meet each individual goal, you raise a ton of cold hard cash in a recession with just a few words and a prompt sent out into cyberspace. YAY You Guys!

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for mentioning the Festival of Trees. PCMC is one of the Intermountain Healthcare hospitals--Intermountain has saved my daughter's life in the NICU and PCMC is where we ended up after she decided to use superglue as eyeliner. THANK YOU for mentioning this wonderful fundraiser. Also, that cake is awesome.

I really, really love all the charity work that's been done throughout December. Love146 especially struck a chord with me. What an amazing charity!

I also like the concept of just giving a little something every day. However, the same thing happened to me as it did with Shannon further up here. Visa withdrew all the money from my card because they thought I was being robbed. LOL!

I would like to thank John and Jen for showing us that every little penny counts if everyone throws a few in! I agree with those who suggested it be a repeat event, and that the charities should all be different. (some will donate more to one charity than another - give soemthing for everyone.)

I would also like to suggest that on the first Sunday Sweet of the Month (or whatever date), you highlight a charity. For instance -February 5th is Go Red for Women Day - raising awareness about heart disease in women. You could do a different charity based on National observances each month... Just an Idea

I love that you did this. Way to put your huge audience to good use! I certainly hope this will become a yearly thing--next year, you'll have even more readers, and hopefully even more donors! Thanks again for doing something great. Things I thought were really effective about the way you organized this:

1) A wide variety of great charities.2) A manageable goal--$1 is nothing, and even $14 is quite doable for most people. If you had solicited $20 or something, I'm certain that not as much money would have been raised. But even with such a low giving request, an awful lot of money was donated.3) Updating us readers about how much was raised. It was exciting to see the progress.

Thank you for the opportunity! I came to CakeWrecks last week to laugh while waiting for the short work week to be over. I had mostly managed to ignore the charity requests, mostly because I give locally. However, the story of the Bucklands literally took my breath away. I can't imagine what that would ever be like, so I popped over.

Wonderful idea about the charities, guys; thank you for seeing it through! I have to say though - I'm pretty disheartened to see the cat charity coming out ahead of all these incredibly important and worthy charities for people. What's with some people's priorities?

I think the way this was done was great. You picked a wide variety of causes to support so it gave everyone a chance of supporting a charity that means something to them personally. Also, according to the Love146 page, the set goal has been surpassed.

I can't thank you enough for featuring To Write Love on Her Arms as one of your charities. I had suggested them when you asked for charities, but I never really thought you would feature them.

In January of 2005, my 14 year old cousin shot herself in the head. She died when her parents unplugged the life support machines the next day. TWLOHA is a charity that my family wholeheartedly supports, and we all took part in the recent TWLOHA Day (where we literally wrote love on our arms).

You raising money for TWLOHA means more to me than you could ever possibly imagine...I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

@Anonymous--re: Puffy Paws--You know, I have to disagree. When people are cruel to animals, cruelty to humans isn't far behind. Hopefully the opposite is also true--charity to animals means that charity to humans is not far behind.

I sometimes feel overwhelmed by being only one person in a sea of needy folks. This 'charity countdown' really gave me a sense of empowerment. In the words of Helen Keller: "I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. I will not refuse to do something I can do."

So happy to see that today (1/5/2010) that we raised over $11K for Love146! Wow! I couldn't *not* donate to this cause--and looking over the amounts, seems like most people gave way more than $1. So nice of them to blog about Cake Wrecks and how we lifted them up. Way to go J & J!!

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